The Great Migration!!

It’s not more than 2 years ago, when the only website that our browser was accustomed to launch was Orkut.com. Wishing friends on their birthdays, scrapping, laughing over the comments on our photos, communities we never missed to enter into (including Orkut-Figure-Finders ;) ) had almost become indispensible parcels of our BE life. I’ve even witnessed crazy acts by many of my friends who were using some JavaScript code and a community to boost their friend count! And some orkutizens had even developed a strange hobby “Testiphilia” (don’t mistake ;) ), asking their friends to write a testimonial in return to a testimonial again! Hundreds of profiles I had seen were overloaded with this kind of business testimonials that often looked like, “Oh! this is one testimonial I should have written a long back”, “ Hmmm…How can I describe this person in 1024 characters? “ (why? Was his character so blunt and complicated? ;)) , “ Hmmm, He’s very very friendly and damn cool guy “, (ya he should be, coz he had agreed to write a similar testimonial to this writer! ) and many such crazy lines. And people started to showcase their personalities by simply joining various communities spread throughout! Some people I know even had tried to pretend about their images through the communities they were into, as in , joining communities like “Java Guru”, “ C/C++ Masters “, “Code Hackers”, “ Solving Greatest Puzzles”, portraying themselves as one among what the community name described! I do know one guy who was in windows all through, had not even worked in Linux for even a day, joining “Linux Masters”, essentially, thats what Orkut did, it rendered a pseudo-personality that you not are. When I saw him joining that community, it really appeared odd to me, seemed like a ‘silent movie’ winning the “Best Dialogues” award !! And when it never required an invitation to join, fake profiles started emerging, where you befriend some random Brazilian chicks- sending them requests and messages using Google translator, navigate through odd communities, basically, the real you!! I recollect Orkut once had disabled copy and save-as options from photos, probably unknowing that there’s a Print-Screen button for all of us!! And at some juncture, orkut provided options to link YouTube videos, and the rest - is hiStory (and herStory!).Soon,people without an Orkut account were in minority among netizens!

Gone are those days. Gone. The period of “Great Migration” started which marked the downfall of orkut empire, atleast in India, which was a strong orkut hold. It’s been more than 4 months now when I last logged into Orkut. Opinion is not just mine, but of acclaimed Alexa rankings, in which Orkut dipped steeply and was listed way outside top 50, while the cause, another giant FB, silently rose to 2nd spot staying just behind Google. Why the Great Migration, is no mysterious. FB claims of having stricter securities and stringent privacy policies, which is just a management answer and not a technical one. Because if it was, that’s a no big deal for Orkut and its parent, the giant Google to provide sufficient security to the profiles. The major thing that paved the way and drove the great migration seems to be the apps! FB hosts millions of applications and which is counting, unlike Orkut that got exposed to this very lately. One experimental guy among your 300 orkut friends suddenly joined FB and started using “Make my cartoon”, “Whats my Italian name”, “How many Gfs do you have” and suddenly you screamed ‘I too wanna’ and Orkut was just too lame for them then. He started sending virtual kisses and gifts and you yelled, I’m still just “Comment”ing. He one day became a friend of a local heroine (who already had 4,387 unknown friends) and you said, enough is enough, lets jump into FB. Moreover, buddies who went to states either to work or pursuing their higher education immediately started using FB, which is THE site in US and we felt, is he a little above us, by using FB???

But the initial phase of migration was not so swift, as the customs and habits were a bit different between them. The one Orkutizen who entered FB for the first time screamed, “Where’s the scrapbook and where do I write”! Like a person shifting from Indian to European commode asking where’s the bucket! It took a bit of time to get accustomed to “Wall” and to divide one “Scrapbook” into two “Wall” and “Private Message” section! But time-passing looked a bit easier and comfortable with FB, given numerous apps to play with, millions of sentimental and slightly mental friendship-love quote links that you just share and get some dozen “likes”(if you are a girl), and innumerable pages to like and forget. To add, FB gave an advanced “Friend Finder” and “You may be knowing” options that made the life of all those who were in Friend-count mission, easy. All the same, girls enjoy the same popularity they used to have in Orkut. They look at the calendar and update their status message “Today is Thursday, so tomorrow gonna be Friday” and get some 15 comments, “Oh you are so intelligent!”, “So, whats the weekend plans”, “Hey you using Windows?” , “ You leaving early today then?” along with some 25 likes.

Implications?? Orkut changed itself to a new improved Orkut with themes and posters, that just made it more intricate to use!! Nonetheless, FB also is adding various alterations and enhancements and integrates third party apps that will duly increase its popularity among coders and users alike. Its been rightly said that in software companies, managers can survive just with Outlook (or Lotus) and S.Es, just with FB. The acronym FBI is slowly, but steadily loosing its firm in common man’s terms as being for “Federal Bureau of Investigation” and settling more for “FaceBook Inc”.